A Message By Murder
by RoseFrederick
Summary: Wizards don't like change very much, and it looks like one of them is determined to halt this so-called progress any way they can. Kate Beckett's team will have to help the Aurors at the NYAO stop it before it stops them - permanently. Sequel fic.
1. HP and the Unwelcome Recognition

**A Message By Murder**

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A/N: This story is a sequel that follows on some time after the events of _Cops and Wizards,_ which itself is a sequel to _If You Don't Believe, It Might Still Find You._ This will be the final installment of that series. As the series was started before Pottermore and even parts of this fic were written prior to a lot of its Word of God about international wizardry being posted, consider it to be automatically AU for any conflicts. _  
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_Chapter One: Harry Potter and the Unwelcome Recognition_

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Few wizards went in for the crazy, convoluted schemes some muggles came up with to murder each other. That was one of the most enduring truths Harry had learned from working with Detective Kate Beckett and the rest of her homicide team from the 12th Precinct. He wasn't quite sure why, still.

It wasn't that murders were exceptionally rare in the wizarding world, nor that wizards were innately more stupid or less creative than muggles. Even if plenty of wizarding murders were ridiculously easy to solve, since you just arrested the person standing over the body with a wand, the blabbermouth bragging about poisons to their neighbor, or found the latest evil megalomaniac trying to take over the world. It was clear enough those happened in the muggle world, too, from the stories the detectives told.

He suspected it might be because there was so much less cause to have to try and avoid detection in the wizarding world. Not only had muggles progressed so much further ahead in terms of techniques for investigating crimes, but the general public was at least generally aware of those advances. Even the dumbest muggle criminal had some basic knowledge of the existence of things like DNA and fingerprints and had an increased fear of being caught. Wizards, by contrast? Few of them ever bothered to learn much about anything that didn't directly concern them after they finished their basic course of schooling and took the NEWTs. They also didn't have things like TV and the Internet to put such information easily into everyone's hands as entertainment, either.

Unfortunately, the lack of savvy in the general population of wizarding criminals was still often reflected in the techniques of the auror's office. For the most part, their investigations were no more sophisticated than they had to be to handle the average day-to-day cases crossing their desks. Which meant that when some unusually clever wizard committed a crime and had the bright idea to cover it up in an unusual way, they were more likely to get away with it than a muggle counterpart would be. Fortunately, although the wizarding world as a whole tended to hate change and live centuries in the past, someone in the New York Auror's Office had seen this handicap for what it was. Which was how Harry's team had ended up working with the team of detectives in the first place.

Before they'd been forced together, the Auror department had already begun to pull in a few experts in muggle investigative science from a number of disciplines and specialties. Then a series of serial murders of wizards and witches living among muggles had brought the two homicide investigations together and lead to Beckett's team being read in on the existence of magic.

The first two cases they'd worked with Beckett's team had been the most awkward. There had been a lot of adjusting by both teams to understand and accommodate how the other half operated. There were tensions, but all of them genuinely wanting to catch the murders more than anything else had definitely helped smooth the way. Ultimately, the homicide team had clearly been a very solid addition to the muggle expert program, and they worked particularly well in conjunction with Harry's team. It had been an easy decision to keep in contact with them after those first cases. They were just so very good at coming up with new ideas and new ways of looking at things that could open up otherwise stalled investigations, even despite the considerable hurdle of knowing very little about magic.

It didn't hurt that the more they'd worked together, the better they had all gotten along on a personal level, either. Over the year following their initial meeting, Harry's team made it a habit to check in with their counterparts at the 12th on a regular basis. Sometimes they got together to work on cases, sometimes to only complain about cases they were working on separately, and every now and then, they gathered in the same place just to spend time and catch up on each others lives. Castle, for one, had bought an owl and sent messages on a pretty regular basis, which sometimes had letters from the others tucked inside.

The program overall was still fairly small and the number of muggles invited in kept purposefully limited. Despite that, already there had been a noticeable downswing in cases being left unresolved according to McAdams, the NYAO's senior liaison officer. Harry and his friends were some of the most open about embracing the unorthodox help, but they weren't the only ones taking advantage of the new resources from the muggle world. They also weren't the only ones that had favorite muggle counterparts. Although aurors tended to be more general purpose investigators than the muggle experts they were working with, fairly early in the program it became clear things ran more smoothly when the same muggles worked with the same aurors repeatedly. After joint cases had become a regular occurrence, the Head of the Auror Department had seen most of the muggles were far more comfortable working with wizards they had already gotten to know personally. Harry didn't really figure that Detective Beckett would be intimidated by anyone, but some of the other muggle experts he had met in passing seemed fairly nervous around unfamiliar wizards.

Ideally, all of their experts would be comfortable with any of the aurors, but there didn't seem much point in fighting it that things went faster and smoother when they paired experts and aurors who had previously worked together. Of course, as always with wizards, there were a couple of teams who refused to work with muggles on their cases at all, but Harry had actually been surprised at how few refused to come around. As to the rest, Harry knew Peterson's team had spent as much time with a pair of robbery detectives as his had with the group from the 12th. Winston Smith, who tended to work alone or with whoever needed an extra team member on a given case, was spending a great deal of time learning about profiling from a retired FBI agent. One of the other auror teams Harry's worked with fairly frequently on the largest cases was headed by a very competent witch named Millicent Marr. She and her partner had started up a working relationship with a medical examiner. As he had with most of the other experts in question, Harry had seen the man in passing a few times when they'd been working cases and Marr's team had brought him by the Auror's Office. Therefore when Harry's team was summoned to Lumos Avenue at an uncomfortably early morning hour before even false dawn was brightening the horizon because someone had found a body, it only took him a few seconds to recognize the face of the victim, Todd Summers.

It wasn't a pretty scene, even beyond the usual. The body had been partially torn apart by a blasting curse and then posed in a grotesquely splayed fashion. Its not-entirely-attached-limbs stretched out right in the middle of the grand staircase fronting the Ministry building where it faced onto the main magical street. The exaggerated way the body was prominently posed to make it as visible as possible was only underlined by the foot-tall writing across the steps above the corpse, scrawled in what appeared to be the victim's blood, "MUGGLE TRASH DOESN'T BELONG HERE".

His first visceral reaction, a product of both the recognition of the victim and the ugliness of the scene, was a wash of cold anger. After that Harry just felt vaguely sick. The war with Voldemort had already left him with too many memories of seeing familiar faces frozen in unpleasant deaths, but he had thought that a thing safely relegated to the past. Not that being an auror didn't involve some ugly scenes. Overall, though, being able to help bring killers to justice and the victims being strangers was enough to keep the cases they regularly handled from affecting him too much. It was a different thing when you knew the person, even in such a glancing way as he'd known this man.

It took him longer than he would have liked to be able to finally draw his eyes away from the grisly scene, and he swallowed hard, getting a grip on his thoughts and emotions, turning to the rest of the wizards who had been called in to deal with the case. Harry worried for a moment that he had perhaps stalled too long in taking charge, but a scan of the grim faces surrounding him showed he wasn't the only one that had needed some extra time to regain his composure.

"Ron, go give the detectives from the homicide team a call, we're going to need them on this one and they should see the scene as fresh as possible," Harry directs his teammate. Ron nods in response and heads off with purpose.

"Hermione, can you send a patronus to get Marr's team to come out? We're going to need to talk to them about what Summers was working on and why he was here this morning." He turns away from her serious face as she mentally composes the best message to send.

Harry addresses the rest of the gathered aurors next. "Let's get some actual barriers set up around this scene to keep people out. It's still early, but we're pretty exposed here and the last thing we need is anybody contaminating the scene. The rest of you lot that aren't keeping people out, start asking around. See if you can find any witnesses who might have seen or heard anything suspicious."

With the obvious next steps underway, Harry takes a moment to worry. It's not a certainty the man's controversial position with the Auror Department is related to his murder, but considering how and where the body had been positioned, and the ominous, hateful message? Those alone were damning enough, but the specific timing of this event is also another factor. The _New York Augury_ had run an article just last week about the Auror Department's slowly expanding policy of pulling in muggles on some of their cases instead of obliviating them. The writer had been no Rita Skeeter, and had been perfectly willing to be completely vague about the identities and specialties of the muggle representatives working with the Department, but there was still an inherent danger in drawing attention to the program. The number of angry howlers that had been making their way to both the paper and the Ministry since were clear evidence of that. No matter how much Harry had wanted things to be different here to what they'd been back home with Head-In-The-Sand Fudge in office, the wizarding world as a whole was still a hidebound group that did not deal well with change.

Beckett's team had taught him not to jump to conclusions, but they do have a very obvious place to start looking here. Therefore when Ron returns after finishing his call, Harry sends him off again to get a listing of everyone who would have had access to the records of the Auror Department regarding their hiring of muggle experts. Meanwhile, he and Hermione run through all the routine magic tracing spells they normally use at a major magical crime scene as they wait for Beckett's team to arrive. Unfortunately, the choice of the middle of wizarding New York's main district as the location left a great deal of their spells hopelessly muddled by the background traces of magic.

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A/N: I think I'm falling back into bad habits of sitting on things long past the time they should be considered done, so I'm gonna put this out now even if there's that one bit I'm not quite... Aside from a final editing run made during posting, this story is finished and will be eight chapters total. As always I appreciate feedback and am interested in hearing what people think, good, bad, or indifferent - though at this point the story is unlikely to be changed much bar minor grammar mishaps.


	2. Kevin Ryan and the Rude Awakening

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 _Chapter Two: Kevin Ryan and the Rude Awakening_

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Kevin Ryan and the rest of his team hadn't been working with the aurors frequently enough walking into Lumos Avenue had become mundane yet. There was still a certain thrill of otherness and as silly as it sounded, enchantment, to the magical world that hadn't yet faded away. Perhaps it never would, no matter how many cases they worked showing how that world could be just as ugly as the regular one. For his part, Kevin had been hoping that would hold true. Then again, looking at the body sprawled across the steps in front of him, if there was any case that could kill the magic, so to speak, it just might be this one.

Passing a glance across the grim faces of the rest of his team, Detective Ryan was pretty sure he wasn't the only one having such thoughts. Still, this was the job, so he pushed it aside to concentrate on the scene. The murderer had clearly been intent on making it one to remember. Between the words scrawled in blood, the grisly method and display, and the choice of location right in the heart of the main wizarding commerce district of New York, there was definitely a message being sent here. Despite the almost painfully early hour of the morning, there were plenty of wizards around to see that message, dressed in gaudy robes and gawking at the macabre display from the other side of barriers set up around the staircase manned by aurors. Thankfully there were now enough aurors familiar with their crime scene procedure the area had been secured as swiftly as possible after the body had been reported, so the scene had only been disturbed twice they knew of. It might not make much of a difference in a place this public, but it certainly wouldn't hurt.

As soon as he'd spotted their arrival, Auror Potter had approached to tell them what little was known so far. "So, uh, we got the call there was a body on the steps right around 4:30am this morning. One of the custodial staff was coming in for an early shift and spotted him."

Potter pauses to grimace and amend his statement, "Well, actually he nearly tripped over the body when he apparated to the foot of the staircase. I reckon the method was just a pretty simple blasting curse."

Kevin casts another glance at the body and has to swallow hard at the idea of what 'pretty simple' magic can do to flesh and bone. Although admittedly, he's also a little distracted by the idea that wizards still have janitors. Who knew? Beckett immediately wants to talk to the man as a witness, and Potter points out where he's standing at the edge of the crowd out to her. She and Castle head off to get his version of events directly.

Meanwhile, given the overview of the bare details, Lanie heads for the body itself on the stairs accompanied by Esposito. She immediately goes to work bending over the body, although Kevin knows her well enough to see her mood is unusually somber. He also knows it wasn't just the hateful message spelled out in blood getting to her, she'd known Todd Summers for a few years on a professional basis. After they'd both been let in on the secret of the magical world, the two had become even closer, having a lot to confer over professionally in terms of working around magic. This had to be particularly hard on her. Kevin figures that's why his partner is hovering so close assisting her with the tech-work of processing the scene. When they work with the wizards, Lanie often ends up doing most of it herself with the extent they assist her varying quite a bit from case to case. In a jurisdiction as big as New York, they usually have a much bigger team for processing a scene more efficiently, but it's not really feasible here under the secrecy the magical world insists upon. They've been working to train some of the aurors to better understand how to process scenes, but it's still a work in progress and this is a case no one wants mistakes made on. As it always is when they lose one of their own.

Passing his eyes over the scene again, Kevin takes it upon himself to pull aside one of the aurors he recognizes in passing and asks him if he can get a wizarding camera to take some photos of the crowd of onlookers. At the questioning look he gets in return, the detective explains the type of perp who would make this kind of production of his murder is highly likely to be the type to come back and revisit the scene for sick jollies. A spark of understanding goes off in the man's eyes before he heads inside the building in search of a camera to take care of it. This is something they'd do with a scene like this in the regular part of the city, but Kevin has the hope that wizarding photos may be even more perfect for it. The things actually moved, so he thought it was possible the more mobile expressions might give something away a normal photo wouldn't.

That taken care of, his next step is to follow up further with Potter's auror team. They're currently conferring with two witches who look vaguely familiar from the time his own team has spent in the NYAO. When he joins them, Potter informs him this is Auror Marr's and her partner, the ones who had been working most closely with the medical examiner currently laying dead a few feet away. Years of work as a homicide detective had him carefully observing their reactions to the scene – those most closely associated with the victims were so often the murderers, after all. He didn't want to believe any of the aurors could be in on it, but you never knew, and some of them had been more hidebound about the muggle cooperative program than others. Even though his team almost always worked with Potter's trio, he'd gotten enough looks from a few wizards just standing around in their offices to know he wasn't entirely welcomed by all of those sworn to uphold wizarding law.

As he watched Potter lead them through their last interactions with the vic a few days prior, he was not surprised to note their demeanor seemed perfectly genuine. They were distressed, but no more or less then he would expect of professional law enforcement agents losing a colleague - dry eyed and calm, but all the more grim for it.

"No, we didn't have a current case with Summers. I last saw him Tuesday afternoon, he came in to go over some evidence he'd found on the body from the Perks case, he'd ruled it a suicide. After we closed it up, we ended up on a stakeout looking into some illegal charms smugglers with Jones and Rogers," the team leader said. She was a stern-looking older witch with steel-gray hair pulled back into a no-nonsense bun. She shook her head back and forth once, decisively, to emphasize her denial of any knowledge why Summers might have been at the Ministry this morning or the night before, "I didn't expect to hear anything from him until the next time we had a case together."

If Summers wasn't here at the Ministry because of a case he was currently working on, that did bring up the question of what he had been doing here. Or where he'd been taken from by the killer to be brought here. Like his own team, after being vetted and admitted to the program, all the muggle experts were allowed largely unrestricted and unmonitored access to the magical district. Granger had told them it was pretty much the way they treated muggle parents of new wizards and witches. Still, Kevin assumed Summers had gotten the same speeches his team had about being cautious. As far as Kevin knew, none of them spent a lot of time wandering around without a magical escort. Especially in light of the article the main newspaper of wizarding New York had just recently run about their involvement with the aurors that had anti-muggle sentiment running even higher than normal generally as well as being directed at them in particular. As whimsical as a magical world sounded on the surface, they were cops and you couldn't do the job without a certain grounding in pragmatism. Even Castle had been talked into being fairly cautious. If Marrand her partner don't know why the man was here, hopefully some of Summer's more intimate acquaintances will be able to give them someplace to start on a timeline of his movements in their next round of interviews.

After wrapping up his questions and thanking the other two aurors for their help, Potter sends Weasley upstairs to get started on exactly that, to check their files for the man's home address and next of kin information. They'd also be stopping by his usual non-magic workplace in the course of their investigation, but all those things were on the list for after they finished up at the scene here. Taking another look around, Kevin was pretty sure they were fast approaching that point. Esposito was making his way across to join the group of them as were Castle and Beckett, and Lanie was now clearly in the process of packing up her equipment and the body.

As soon as they were all in range to talk at a reasonable speaking volume, Beckett took charge. "Okay, Lanie, we got anything to work with here?"

The petite medical examiner shook her head in the negative. "Pretty sure this is exactly what it looks like. Death by magic, and he was definitely killed here from the blood spatter and volume. I've seen enough of these by now to know there probably won't be much more the autopsy can tell me."

Taking up from where Lanie had left off, Esposito added something they'd all realized. "We've processed what we can, but a place this public and busy? Won't do us much good."

Beckett nodded. "Castle and I talked to a few of the custodial staff. It's a public office that never completely closes, but nobody really looks out this way unless they're coming or going from this entrance. The street has pretty heavy traffic, but the Ministry employees mostly use the floos inside instead. The guy who found the body usually does, too, but ran out of floo powder a couple days ago."

"Pretty cocky, doing this out here in such a public space," Castle commented. "Taking the time to spell out his message after he killed our guy, where anybody could walk by?"

Beckett frowned. "And our killer clearly doesn't want to hide; he wants us all to see his message. From what we know of magic, the murder itself would have been quick enough, if not necessarily quiet," she looked to the two aurors for confirmation, receiving nods in return, and continued, "but can we assume the same about the written message?"

Granger spoke up, her tone thoughtful, "It would be hard to hide the noise of a blasting curse with most common concealment spells. There are several spells for transcription that would be nearly as fast as a blasting curse and far less noticeable, though. It wouldn't have to take all that long, especially if they had practice at transcription spells."

Potter spoke up. "Summers pretty much exclusively worked with one team, and their last case together wrapped up a couple of days ago. So no one should have been expecting him to come in this morning."

Beckett's face took on a sharper look of attention at the auror's words. "Then the first thing we need to do is figure out why Summers was here. Either he was coming here for some reason not related to work, he was lured here by the murderer, or he was brought here and then killed. We need to find out which and whether they chose him specifically."

She doesn't say what they're all thinking, that if the murderer wasn't after Summers specifically, it could have been one of their team instead.


	3. KB and the Worrying Implications

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 _Chapter Three: Kate Beckett and the Worrying Implications_

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It was unsurprising that quite a few of the cases they ended up sharing with the Auror Department had to do with hatred between muggles and wizards. From what Potter's team had been willing to say – and Kate had picked up on enough cues to realize there was a whole hell of a lot they weren't willing to say – wizards had a long and ugly history of seeing regular people as something lesser. So it was no surprise at all that when the worlds intersected, it often had something to do with that simmering undercurrent.

Despite the inevitability of it, it was still a depressing truth every time. Seeing it strike a little too close to home in this case was already worrying her more than she wanted to admit. It was easier to push away the fear of the unknown and unstoppable when it was happening to complete strangers. Summers was someone she knew, if not well, and worse, someone who was killed at the building where he performed an uncomfortably similar function to the one she and her team were currently involved in. Which left her with a strong hope they would quickly find something in Summers' life to reveal some unrelated motive for the murder, because otherwise, Summers might only be the first victim. She hated the thought, but better to be a little paranoid than to be caught by surprise.

Their first stop of the day was Summers' apartment, where he lived with his girlfriend, Shannon Elder. Like all of their own friends and loved ones, Elder only knew Summers had been working intermittently in a consulting capacity with an unspecified confidential agency if she'd been told even that much. When she opened the door to Beckett and Castle, the woman's face immediately changed from minor annoyance to trepidation. Whether it was from some worry of her own or something she'd picked up about their expressions, Elder's first words were, "What's wrong?"

"I'm Detective Beckett and this is Castle, can we come in?"

She doesn't answer, just opens the door, turning away from them. "Jason, go play in your room for a bit – go on!"

A boy of maybe six or seven grumbles about having to leave the cartoons playing on the television behind, but heads off down a hallway as ordered. Once the sound of his door shutting a little over-firmly reaches them, Elder motions them towards a sofa near where the boy had been and simply says, monotone, "He's dead, isn't he."

For all that she seems to have realized what was coming, when Beckett actually says, "I'm so sorry," Elder buries her face in her hands and starts sobbing. Kate sees this kind of grief too often in her job, but somebody's got to be there to help. So she waits until the woman has regained enough composure to look at them again, and take the tissues Castle has held out to her from an end table with a quiet word of thanks.

"I know this is hard, but we're going to catch whoever did this. To do that, I'm going to have to ask you some questions, okay?"

Elder just nods.

"Did you see him this morning?"

"No," Elder says, shaking her head slowly. "I'm an adjunct professor at Metropolitan College of New York. I didn't have any classes today so I was going to work on a few things at home later. He's scheduled to work afternoons this week, but last night he told me he had to go in for some consulting thing early this morning. By the time I woke up, he was gone." She chokes a little on the last word.

"Did he say anything about what he was working on or how long he expected it to take?"

"We don't talk about his work. I don't, I don't really want to know most of the time, and some of it is about active cases, so I'm not supposed to know some of the time, so we – we don't talk about his work." She pauses and reaches to pull out more tissues from the box to wipe at her eyes. They give her another moment to compose herself, and before too long, her brow wrinkles in thought and she adds, "He did say last night that he wouldn't be back until after his regular afternoon shift at the morgue, though."

Beckett mulls this new information over in her mind. The team Summers normally worked with had made it clear they weren't expecting him to come in and work on any open cases with them. Although it would have been quite unusual for Summers to work with one of the other teams, Potter had gone ahead and run a check just in case, but Summers had not been officially scheduled to work with anyone else at the Ministry that morning either. They'd be double checking with his regular office, but so far as any of them knew Summers was not doing consulting work outside of the NYAO project. Beckett had been half expecting they would get confirmation he hadn't been planning to make a trip in to the Ministry of his own volition because he had no reason to be there, but Elder's answers are taking them towards the opposite conclusion. Which only makes the question of what he was doing all the more pressing and mysterious.

Beckett frowns a little to herself, and tries to formulate how to approach the other things she needs to ask about. Before she can get out her next question, Castle interrupts. Of course, they've been working together long enough now that it's a question she was going for anyway. "I hate to ask, but you didn't really seem surprised at the news. Was there something going on, something he was worried about?"

Elder fusses with the tissue still in her hands nervously before dropping it onto the sofa beside her, near the box. "I don't know. He's just been, nervous, I guess? And then, well, I knew you were from homicide – I mean, Nikki Heat," she tilts her head in indication towards Castle, "I just assumed the worst."

Beckett jumps back in. "You said he seemed nervous, how do you mean?"

"I don't - I don't know, really. I'd just catch him looking worried sometimes, and he'd say it was nothing or that I was imagining it. I didn't want to push because sometimes he'd get like that about things from work, but it had been a lot longer than most of his cases lasted. The last several months I'd wake up and he would be awake, just staring out the window. He said it was insomnia, though I'd never known him to have trouble sleeping the whole time we were together."

"Was there anything else odd that you noticed, even if it seemed unimportant at the time? Any problems he might have had with anyone, or any kind of strange phone calls or weird things appearing in the mail? Any unusual trips or changes in his hours?" Castle suggests.

She thinks for a long moment, but eventually responds, "No, not that I noticed. No, just what I said."

"Is there anyone else he might have talked to if there was something going on, a work colleague or maybe a friend?"

"Maybe," she says, before another long pause. "Sometimes he needed to talk about his work but he didn't want to upset me, and it always used to upset me, which is why we didn't talk about it. He had a couple friends at the morgue, but most of his friends are our friends, parents from Jason's school. He wouldn't talk to them about anything like that. He had been spending a lot of time with his cousin Alfred, lately, though. They went out a lot for drinks without me, I don't know what they talked about. Alfred Gerard, I think he teaches at some little private elementary school somewhere."

"Is there anything else, anything else at all you think might help? Even if it seems silly?"

Elder shakes her head in negation. They give her a moment more to think, but she seems more like she's zoning out than actually trying to come up with anything that might help. They've probably got all they're going to get from her for the moment, so it's time to let her deal with her grief.

Beckett thanks the woman for her time and reaffirms that they're going to catch whoever is responsible, handing her a card and saying to call if she needs anything or remembers anything else she thinks might be important. Unfortunately, except for the sad duty of informing the next of kin, this interview has been a bust for learning anything useful about what Summers was doing this morning. There's a slight chance someone at the coroner's office may be able to shed light on his expected schedule or backup Elder's assertion he'd seemed nervous lately. It's not a particularly likely hope, however, because so far as Beckett had gathered his closest associate at work lately had been Lanie herself, who hadn't mentioned any strange behavior and had already confirmed she hadn't heard anything from Summers about working any cases today.

Still, heading to the coroner's office to talk to his coworkers was the next logical step. They'd been called out to Lumos Avenue fairly early by most standards, so she and Castle stopped off for lunch at a little sandwich shop on their way. The usually boisterous author was quieter than usual throughout the meal, and Beckett assumed it was because he was as worried as she was that this most likely had to do with working with the NYAO. It was the most obvious answer considering the message left with the body. Despite that, she'd rather he didn't think about it too much – as prone to overreaction as he tended to be, she did her best to keep the conversation going in other directions. From the pensive line that kept reappearing between his brows she knew the distraction hadn't been entirely successful, but it was good enough for the moment, until they had more proof of where this case was headed.

At the coroner's office, they looked through Summers' work space and talked to those who were working the afternoon shift he would have been on. Beckett had been hoping for some indication of other stresses in the man's life that would mean he had been specifically having problems with someone, but no one at his workplace admitted to having seen any evidence of that.

She hadn't really expected they would be able to find any hints at what he had been heading in to the Ministry building for, though she was still somewhat disappointed to find nothing. With the level of secrecy surrounding the wizarding world, they had all been warned against leaving any kind of evidence of the magical world where anyone might find it – and here that pretty much ruled out both Summers' work and home. Still, there had been a lingering chance of some kind of day planner or schedule with a note about a sufficiently generic name or case file designation they could use, but their search comes up empty. Once they head back to the precinct, Beckett finds a number for the cousin Elder had mentioned and calls him up on the phone. He's saddened to be getting a phone call from a New York homicide detective, but says he doesn't know anything that can help them.

Beckett can't help feeling frustrated. If this really was just a random crime against anyone working for the NYAO, it makes sense there wouldn't be any leads to follow, and the more likely that scenario becomes, the less she likes it. She'd already had a brief chat with Potter about her concerns in regards to the relative danger the rest of them might be in, but short of being careful and having the aurors on alert, Beckett feels infuriatingly helpless. The last several cases they've worked with Potter's team have been simple murders once you took the magic out of the equation. This is the most out of her depth she's felt about the magical world since their first case together, and she really doesn't appreciate the rerun.

While Beckett and Castle had been looking into Summers' home and work, Esposito and Ryan had been working on following the man's paper trail. That was one unusual bonus they normally couldn't count on when working a case with the NYAO, the man actually had a history of financials to follow up on like any other regular New Yorker. The two halves of the team met up back at the precinct to exchange what information they'd managed to gather for the day. As fruitless as Beckett and Castle's day had been, the other two detectives had managed a little bit better luck for their portion of the investigation, something Beckett was buoyed by as soon as the elevator doors opened and she saw the looks on their faces. The two of them were clearly eager to share their news, as they both made a beeline for her desk.

"Neither Summers' family, his colleagues at the morgue, nor his desk told us anything new. What have you two got?"

Esposito answered. "Mostly the guy was just as squeaky clean as you'd expect from somebody who had to go through the background checks the NYAO did a few months ago after that incident with Borgin. Not everything checks out, though. Seven thousand dollars was deposited in his account the last two months running on the 15th of the month. We've got tech working on tracing down the origin of the funds, but it may not come to much. The depositor was SBCL Incorporated. So far as we can tell, it may not actually exist because we haven't find any records of it yet. It also it hasn't used the one account we know of for anything other than the payments to Summers."

"That's nice and suspicious," Castle offered, his tone clearly more upbeat than it had been since this morning. Beckett feels the same relief trying to surface in herself, but she keeps it throttled down.

"It is promising," Beckett allowed, "but we can't dismiss the likelihood this has some connection to the NYAO, considering the location of the crime scene. Potter's team has been looking into the threats they've received against the department and the aurors Summers was working with. We'll have to cross-check for people in the Ministry who would know enough to work that much with our banking system."

"I'll just be happy if it's personal and not some psycho after people for working with the wizards," Ryan muttered, loud enough to be heard by all of them.

Beckett sighed. This lead made it seem a whole lot more likely than it had been just a few hours ago. It was too early to draw any such conclusions, though.


	4. Hermione Granger and the Pile of Howlers

_._

* * *

 _Chapter Four: Hermione Granger and the Pile of Howlers_

* * *

Working with the Auror Department, you didn't see a whole lot of horrific things. At least not most of the time – they spent more time breaking up fights and tracking down stolen valuables than they did anything else. Even when there was a murder, it was far more often the perpetrator used something like _Avada Kedavra_ or one of the quicker-acting toxic potions that didn't really leave too much visible damage. True, the frozen rictus of fear left on the victims' faces had its own kind of horror, but it was nothing like the scene she'd been called to this morning. To see something like what a blasting curse could do to a person was bad enough, but to see it inflicted on the body of someone she knew, if only in passing, was just completely dreadful.

Hermione wanted to dismiss outright the idea anyone in the department could have had anything to do with the horrible attack, but by now she'd spent enough time working on criminal investigations with the homicide team to be uncomfortably aware that people were often capable of more truly awful things than those around them suspected was possible. Still, she hated the idea, and that was why she didn't object when Harry asked her to sort through hate mail received by the Ministry after that newspaper article. She thought it was a better choice for her peace of mind than participating in questioning others in the Ministry who had worked with Todd Summers. She was also better at quickly detecting and sorting out mail jinxes than her two partners, and somebody had to do it.

The _Augury_ had dubbed it The Innovative Investigators Program and given quite a positive slant to the piece, but it had still earned plenty of outrage regardless. Even for those who had no issues with muggleborns, many still felt allowing muggles themselves into the magical world was several giant leaps too far.

Some of what she had to go through was regular owl post that had been collected and filed in with the other various complaints received about whatever anyone wanted to complain about. The Ministry had learned ages ago keeping such letters around could sometimes be helpful in identifying someone who had complained about a landmark just before it was suspiciously covered in graffiti. Magical traces left in sealing the letter or even an actual signature on the letter were surprisingly common in such cases. Harry seemed to think that it was a matter of wizards not really thinking about ways they could be caught, but Hermione thought it was just an indication most wizards didn't think much at all. As a group they never were terribly good at logic.

The larger portion of mail in this particular case, however, was recordings of howlers that had been pouring in over the last week. The stream of angry correspondence had only just started to trickle off, according to Mr. Wicklebach, who was in charge of incoming post. Luckily for her, and not so much for Mr. Wicklebach, it was Ministry policy to transcribe the Howlers before they burst into flames. There was a job she was quite happy not to have, even on a day when they were working a case like this one.

Still, even with the annoyance of having to actually listen to the howlers herself thankfully a non-issue, it wasn't a small pile of mail she had to make her way through. Worse, even though she agreed it made sense to look through all of it, unless there were some fairly specific threats included, it wasn't likely to help them very much. Perhaps she'd get lucky, but Wicklebach and his two assistants were meant to take note of any obvious violent threats lodged against anyone at the Ministry. They hadn't previously reported nor since set aside any such post to give her. Still, there could be more oblique threats that had seemed harmless at the time, so Hermione settled in and did the work of going through all of it. Piece by badly spelled and horrifically chicken-scratched piece.

Several hours of pure tedium later, Hermione had a small pile of parchment set aside from the mass. The majority of it was simply vague implications about how the "auror department would be sorry" or "muggles should stay out of wizard business". Hermione even saved one excessively colorfully worded one about how "things were never like this in Great Aunt Mabel's day" because of how it degenerated into derogatory rambling about squibs and muggles. There was nothing that truly stood out as psychotic, however, and no specific threats that matched up with what had happened to the dead medical examiner. More than a couple did contain vague death threats, but she'd been down here to look through owl post enough times before to see that changing the hours Lumos Avenue shops were open could result in the same. Eventually she gathered up the few notes that seemed worthy of a second look and gladly left the Ministry's post station behind her.

When she got back up to the Auror Department, Hermione took the notes straight to her desk. She still needed to cast the bevy of detection and signature charms she knew on them, but she'd needed to get out of that room for a while first. Not for any good magical reason, just frustration and boredom. She took a glance around the room to see if any of her team was back, but when they're clearly still busy elsewhere, she sighed and buckled down to do the detection charms, too. Ultimately, she is able to add notes to a couple of the letters in the pile about their origins, which is better than nothing, and a few of them are signed. Of course, as at least half were transcriptions of howlers to begin with and thus had no traces, she was at least thankfully finished fairly soon. She passes off the list of names to one of the junior aurors and sends the witch off to see if any of the people on it have arrest records for violent offenses. If there was one thing the Ministry excelled at above all it was record keeping, especially for violent offenders who would have spent at least some time in Malazin, the local dementor-free equivalent to Azkaban.

Her task done and still wondering where Ron and Harry have gotten off to, she looks around the department again. Most of the aurors are back now from the early morning canvas of Lumos Avenue that had mobilized most of them to go from shop to shop looking for any witnesses. Hermione assumes her two partners must have gone off to lunch without her, which is kind of annoying, but not entirely out of character for the still sometimes absentminded duo. So she's quite surprised when she sees them coming out of one of the side rooms together and talking in low tones to a man she doesn't recognize as they're ushering him on his way out. She waits a little impatiently by their desks for the boys to finish and as soon as the man is gone and they're within reasonable speaking distance, bursts out with, "What was that about?"

"A lead," Ron volunteers cheerfully.

"Yeah," Harry agrees, and expands at her glare, "that was Mr. Nott. He's a member of the janitorial staff who doesn't come in until afternoon for the evening shift. He heard about the murder and came to talk to us on his own. It turns out he saw Summers arguing with somebody last Tuesday late in the evening hours after most of the departments had closed down for the day."

"Really," Hermione says. It's a promising lead, if for no other reason than an argument sounds far more personal than the attack had been staged to look. Now if only it's a helpful one in other ways. "Did he get a clear enough look for memory retrieval to be worth it?"

Ron nods. "Better than. He recognized the other bloke. It's a guy called Oddson who works down in Control of Magical Creatures. Who, funnily enough, called in sick this morning. I figure we need to have a chat with him."

"Definitely. We should check in with the detectives first, though," Hermione adds, knowing their joint cases always go smoother when they make an effort to keep everyone equally involved and updated. With any luck, Beckett's team has picked up their own share of useful leads and they can wrap this case up neatly and quickly. Hermione quickly filled Ron and Harry in on the mostly unhelpful mail she'd sorted through and then took it upon herself to make the call to the rest of their team, going downstairs to use the one creaky old telephone the Ministry possessed for contacting muggle departments when necessary.

When she came back upstairs after having gotten through to Beckett's cellphone, she saw Harry and Ron directing a middle aged bald wizard with a full beard into an unused office. They leave the door open as they walk inside and take a seat, and from their relaxed body language, Hermione assumes they're just passing time until the 12th's team has a chance to get there and get down to the real questioning. That assumption is backed up by her hearing Harry say they were just waiting on some of their colleagues to join them and asking the wizard if he'd like anything while they waited as she approaches the room.


	5. Richard Castle and the Dead End

_._

* * *

 _Chapter Five: Richard Castle and the Dead End_

* * *

A/N: Since I was later than I intended with chapter four and it's a slow one, here's five, too.

* * *

Beckett had just been on the verge of calling their auror counterparts to discuss whether their portion of the investigation had any better luck in sussing out any viable leads when her phone rings. After making a couple of vague agreements into the phone that make it clear she's talking to one of the aurors, she asks if they are "bringing him in" before hanging up, turning to the rest of the team.

"We need to head over to the Ministry, sounds like they've got a lead. One of the janitorial staff came forward with a story about an argument between our vic and a potential suspect."

"Ooh, I know, all of the janitors in the wizarding world were about to go on strike, because who wants to be a janitor when there's magic, right? Summers found out and was helping them to organize and someone decided to take him out," Castle suggested. Yeah, he was feeling pretty bothered how close to home this murder hit, but there was no reason to let that bring everybody down more than usual. He'd been pretty worried by the implications this morning, they all had, but with the money trail and this new lead, he was feeling hopeful this was just your classic random murder that had tried to disguise itself as something less personal. With the recent article in the wizard newspaper, it sounded exactly like something a murderer in his books would do.

Beckett scoffed. "Yeah, Castle, or maybe the owls did it. C'mon," she added, gesturing with her head towards the elevator.

The Auror's office still doesn't have proper interrogation rooms quite like the precinct does, but they've made due easily enough. Auror Granger had found a convenient viewing spell that worked much like a two-way mirror without the mirror the first time they'd needed to question a suspect there, and it has come in handy several times since. When they finally arrive after having driven to the nearest entrance to the magical district and made their way through the Ministry to the Auror's Office, it's to find all three of their wizard compatriots waiting outside of a closed door.

As they approach, Hermione speaks up. "We've picked up Reginald Oddson who works for the Department of Magical Creature Control. This afternoon one of the janitorial staff came to us and said he'd seen him arguing with our victim about something last week. He said he couldn't tell what they were talking about, just that they were clearly angry and he was sure it was Oddson and Summers. When we went downstairs to try and ask Oddson about it, we found out he'd called in sick for today. When we went 'round to his apartment, we found him throwing things in a suitcase and it seemed like he was in a hurry to be somewhere else. "

"Sounds promising," Beckett responds. "How do you want to handle this?" It's not entirely a surprise that Beckett asks; while the detective likes to be in charge, she's been trying to mentor the aurors in all aspects of non-magical methods of criminal investigation.

Auror Granger's answer follows a short silence of contemplation. "I think he'll probably respond better to us as aurors, so we should handle most of the questions, but considering the message left at the crime scene, you should definitely be involved right up front – we should see how he reacts to you."

Beckett clearly agrees and Castle is disappointed to be left outside to watch as Potter, Granger, and Beckett go inside. Not that he can't still hear everything through the mirror spell Weasley sets up for them, but he does like the chance to actually be in on the action of confronting suspects. Although his writer's intuition has already started writing this Oddson guy off. C'mon, being seen arguing with the victim just before the murder? Far too simple.

"So, Oddson, thinking about leaving town, were you? You've gotta know that looks pretty suspicious when we have witnesses saying they saw you arguing with a man who turned up dead just this morning," Beckett starts out as she clearly means to go on - without pulling any punches.

"I – I, don't know what you mean," the man says, shifting awkwardly. Oddson is an older man, probably in his early to mid fifties, bald and with a graying brown beard and shabby-looking robes with frayed hems. Clearly, being a janitor isn't any more of a profitable career choice in the wizarding world than it usually is in the regular one.

"I think you do," Beckett says harshly. "I think you got angry at Todd Summers, and I think this morning that anger boiled over and you killed him. You tried to make it look like a hate crime, but then you started to worry we'd find you out and so you decided to run."

"No! That's not how it was!" Oddson bites out, sweat visible on his brow. "We fought, yes, and I was afraid you'd think it was me when I heard, but I sure didn't kill him! And I weren't running, neither! So I fibbed about bein' sick at the worst damn time, but my ex called about my kid and there ain't no way she's running off and leavin' Sammy with her dumbass brother! Wouldn't trust him not to kill a pygmy puff." Castle makes a mental note to find out what a pygmy puff is and whether or not he wants one.

"Why should we believe you?" Potter asks, his tone much more sympathetic than the biting voice Beckett has been using.

The man just shakes his head and doesn't answer.

"Mr. Oddson, if you don't give us something to go on here, we can't help you," Granger says evenly. "Why don't you start with telling us what you were arguing with Todd Summers about?"

The man looks up, and clearly believing the young witch's sympathetic face, he visibly resigns himself, sitting back in the chair and blowing out a loud breath. Internally, Castle makes a mental note to congratulate Granger later on her improving skill with interrogation techniques. She'd always had a sympathetic face, but she's learned how to turn it into an even more solid 'good cop' routine.

Finally, he speaks, hesitantly at first before growing more definitive as he keeps eye contact with Granger, not looking at the others. "Okay. You gotta understand, I didn't know the guy. I mean, he was a muggle, right? I don't got nothing against muggles, but my gran was a muggleborn and we ain't looked back. Thing is, he was coming and going from the Auror Office at all different times of day, and when you're doing the late shift at a place like the Ministry you say hey, just to break up the monotony, y'know? Friendly, and all. Thing was, he's only supposed to be coming and going from the Auror's Office. That's the agreement," his eyes flick swiftly to Beckett and then away again, "but I saw him coming out of Records twice, late at night."

"Records?" Beckett asks, sharply.

Granger answers her in the pause, "There's an official records room downstairs, logs all kinds of things like magical births, deaths, wizard properties, magical agreements. The information can sometimes be sensitive so it is restricted access."

"So that's what your fight was about, him being where he wasn't supposed to be?" Potter says to Oddson, redirecting things back to their subject.

"Yeah," Oddson agrees. "I told him he weren't supposed to be in there, that he'd get himself in a whole heap of trouble. Best case, you'll end up chucked out and obliviated, I told him. He got mad, said I should mind my own beeswax."

"And you just let it go?" Beckett asks.

"Hell no. Didn't care for his attitude and I reported 'im straight off." Oddson's expression is a picture of offended indignance, which makes Castle more inclined to believe him. The guy doesn't seem like that good of an actor.

Beckett looks to the two aurors who exchange their own look of confirmation. "There was no report filed about him, we checked all the records pertaining to Summers at the start of this investigation."

"Well, I dunno what to tell you, ma'am. I filled out paperwork in the Department of Security. Ask Timmy Snalls, he was the one workin' the desk when I turned it in. It was Wednesday, last Wednesday, early afternoon when I got off shift."

"We're gonna check that story, and we're also gonna check your alibi. So tell me, Mr. Oddson, where were you early this morning between midnight and four thirty?"

He fidgets a bit. "With Tandy Turtledove, lives on Owltree Court. Was there 'til afternoon, one, one-thirty, maybe. Any chance of not ratting me out to the wife?"

They give him the typical talk about not leaving town, and outside the room, Weasley heads off to make arrangements to have him followed to make sure he actually abides by that suggestion when they let him go. Although they talk about holding him for a while, Beckett doesn't consider it necessary unless they catch him in a lie since they don't really have any evidence that he did more than argue with their victim. Granger heads off to check with Security to see if Oddson's story about filing a report checks out with Timmy Snalls. Potter goes to see about the man's alibi. Castle misses his cellphone while they wait and tries to talk Beckett into coming over for a family night at his place sometime this week.

Unsurprisingly, Granger and Weasley return first within a few moments of each other. "Okay, Mr. Snalls was working the desk at the Department of Security Office in the early morning hours on Wednesday, and he does remember Oddson coming in and filling out a complaint form. It went into the processing pile. The weird thing is that we didn't overlook it before, it seems to have disappeared between that desk and the hands of the Security Officers who review complaints."

"Could Summers have removed it himself?" Ryan asks.

"Not likely, mate," Weasley replies. "Security Office is restricted, too, and there's more people in and out of it all day. Somebody'd have noticed a muggle in there – no offense."

"So whatever Summers was into, he probably wasn't in it alone," Beckett muses.

"Sounds like we need to figure out just what Todd Summers thought he was looking for in this records room," Esposito says.

"Might give us his accomplices, and maybe his murderer," Castle agrees.

Unfortunately, doing this is easier said than done. Access is restricted, but it is restricted more on the honor system than by being carefully guarded. There is a magical sign in sheet that requires a signature for the door to open, but unsurprisingly Todd Summers' name does not appear on it. They spend the greater portion of the evening going down the list and confirming the rest of the people on the sheet actually visited the records department when they said they did. When it's all said and done several hours later, they have three late night visits unaccounted for under the names of employees who swear they haven't been to the records room recently and certainly not on those specific dates and times.

It's pretty late when Castle finally returns to his loft from the Auror's Office. Late enough he's not really surprised his home is both dark and quiet. Alexis should be in bed by now and Martha is probably out somewhere causing a stir. At least that's what he assumes until he attempts to flick on the downstairs light and gets no response from the switch.

As overactive as his imagination sometimes is, he's too tired and currently grounded in reality to think anything of it until he sees a strange shadow curling across the threshold of the doorway of his office that slowly resolves itself into the shape of a hand to his eyes. A hand in a pool of dark liquid. A choking sense of fear cuts off his air. NO!


	6. Javier Esposito and the Lie in the Dark

_._

* * *

 _Chapter Six: Javier Esposito and the Lie in the Dark_

* * *

Esposito entered Castle's loft in a hurry to see an unusual bustle of police and crime scene techs, unsure from the call he'd received exactly what it was he was walking into. The writer was sitting on his couch next to Beckett, looking pretty shaken, his face sickly pale. Ryan is standing just behind them. They all look at least a little worried, but not devastated, and he's not sure what to make of that. He walks over to them and asks matter-of-factly, "What happened?"

All three of them look up, but Beckett is the one that speaks. "Castle came home tonight and found a body in his office," before Esposito can ask the question on the tip of his tongue, she continues on, "thankfully what he thought to be a person's hand in the dark was a torn up owl's wing."

Esposito blows out a breath of relief. Mrs. R and Alexis are almost as much a part of the team family now as Castle himself is, and he's glad they're okay. Of course, he's still got questions. "So why was there a dead owl in his office?"

"We're thinking intimidation," Ryan chimes in. "They didn't leave a written message this time, but it's still a pretty grisly scene in there. Poor little guy." His partner sneezes on the ending word.

"I take it we're thinking this is connected." Esposito doesn't ask it as a question, because it's not.

"It'd be a hell of a coincidence," Beckett replies. "Alright. Castle is going to call Martha and Alexis who, luckily, were out together tonight on a whim. They're going to spend some time staying at a hotel with a security detail. Meanwhile, we are going to catch whoever is behind this." She reaches out to pat Castle's hand reassuringly.

As they leave the shaken author on the couch, Esposito takes Beckett aside. "So are we thinking now that this really is a wizard prejudice thing?"

Beckett bites her lip. "Maybe. Or it could be someone wanting to distract us from the case, scare us off. Someone had to lose that report in the Security Office, and that means someone in the Ministry is involved. They would know we were asking questions today, specifically questions about Summers instead of the message wanted us to get from the scene. If it was really about working with the aurors, why deescalate the level of violence after you've already moved up to murder? Why not leave a more explicit message if you're trying to generate fear? No, I'd put money on this just being a distraction from the real motive for Summers' murder. But that doesn't mean they might not be willing to kill again, so let's all be cautious. I'll stick with Castle 'til we get him and the family squared away and we'll start on this thing with fresh eyes tomorrow."

Ryan's attention goes to the door and Esposito turns to look and see Potter's team has arrived. He assumes they're going to do their own check for magical traces once the regular crime scene techs finish up. Beckett motions for the officer on the door to let them through, and explains what happened again while they wait. Unfortunately, the wait is for nothing; the wizards have no more luck than the crime scene techs at finding traces of their culprit.

The next morning, the whole group is once again gathered back together in one of the side rooms at the Auror's office. The detectives had started coming in through the street entrance separately a few cases ago rather than taking the portkey, as it was just easier and less nausea-inducing. When Esposito arrived, Beckett was already giving one of her thousand yard stares to the whiteboard they'd conjured up for her. (Possibly quite literally, Esposito suspects. The whole magic thing is still kind of a trip sometimes.) She's sipping on a coffee from one of the auror department's cups, indicating it isn't her first one of the morning. Ryan is standing with Potter and Granger across the room, and the three of them are listening to Castle tell some kind of story. He takes that as a good sign the writer is bouncing back pretty well from his scare the night before.

They all look up at his entrance, since he's the last to arrive. Weasley, who had been out in the main part of the offices, comes in behind him and shuts the door. Beckett stands up and takes the initiative to recap what they know so far.

"So here's where we are. Todd Summers, 43, medical examiner and consultant with the NYAO was murdered sometime between one and three thirty am at the scene according to Lanie's best estimate and the witness statements the aurors got while canvassing about when the body appeared on the scene. The murder was done by use of magic, specifically a blasting curse according to Auror Potter's determination, which any witch or wizard would be capable of performing."

Beckett pauses for a moment, and then continues. "We don't know yet what the motive was, but we have a couple of options. The scene was framed as a hate crime, with a message written in the victim's blood. I'm told that while it was probably done by a spell, we may still be able to match the handwriting to a suspect's if we have a sample for comparison. Auror Granger previously sorted through the Ministry's post office to find several pieces of hate mail about the article from _The New York Augury_ which made vague threats, but there were no obvious handwriting matches among the letters and the few wizards and witches who were definitively identified by their own signatures or her tracing efforts have already been questioned, and all have seemingly solid alibis. We also have photos of the bystanders at the scene taken with a wizard camera, but there are no obvious suspects who look too interested in the scene," Beckett grimaces, "actually, there are just too many gawkers to pick any particularly suspicious individuals out."

"It may be a hate crime, but it may not. Our victim was also clearly involved in some kind of clandestine behavior we haven't yet figured out. He was getting money deposited regularly in his bank account for the last several months from an unknown company with an acronym for a name. He was caught sneaking into a restricted access section of the Ministry where important records are kept several times and was confronted and reported for it. Yet the report mysteriously disappeared after it was filed."

"Last, and most worryingly, there was an attack at Castle's loft last night. They killed his pet owl, which was a clear enough message without any words. It could be because some wizards don't consider us welcome here for not having magic, or it could be because we're asking too many questions about Summers' strange activity around the Ministry. Either way we're not going to back down." Beckett looks them all over once, and concludes her summary of the case by saying, "So we have the message, the money, the missing report, and the attack on Castle's place last night. We need to figure out what parts of this are important and how it connects together. They've messed with two of our own and I want this case closed. Ryan, Esposito, any luck on tracking the money back further?"

"The deposits were attributed to SBCL Incorporated, but as we suspected, it's a fake. The company straight up doesn't exist. We got in touch with the bank the money transfers were made to, and got lucky - they were made in person. Still waiting on them to get back to us with their security footage from those afternoons."

"Alright. So what's in the Records Department and who can normally access it?" Beckett asks, turning the the aurors.

"General personal records – births, deaths, marriages, divorces, magical status. Properties owned by wizards or magically modified in certain ways that require registration. Anyone can file to see records about themselves, their immediate family members, and properties they own, but otherwise outside auror investigations they're meant to be sealed."

"Why Summers?" Castle asks, suddenly. "I mean, from a story perspective, it makes zero sense. Why pay off the one guy who is definitely out of place to be going into that room?"

"Maybe he's the only bloke they had access to or maybe they had some reason to approach him in particular," Potter suggests.

Castle makes a face. "I still don't like it."

"I don't like it either, Castle, but it's what we've got," Beckett says.

"Unless," Castle starts, and Esposito exchanges a glance with Ryan, mentally taking bets on whether or not what comes out of the writer next will be a crazy theory or a crazy-good theory, "the money isn't connected to his being in the records room at all!"

Beckett shakes her head. "Castle, why else would he be in there?"

"Maybe he was looking something up for himself!"

"Okay, what, exactly?" Beckett is starting to sound interested. Perhaps because they're dead-ended otherwise.

"I don't know. You said there are records about births, deaths, magical status. Are we sure he had no other connections to the wizarding world?"

Granger looks thoughtful. "We didn't really look too deeply into his family. He could be descended from a magical line somewhere in his family's more distant past and that would be written down in the records."

"Even if that were the case, why would he be killed over it? Why would someone cover up that he'd been in there?" There's a furrow between Beckett's brows as she tries to puzzle some sense out of the case, eyes tracing back and forth over what they do have written down on the white board. "Okay," she says, finally. "Potter, we need to know who could easily make that report on his unauthorized access disappear. I need a list of people and any ties they might have to Summers."

"Ryan, Esposito, see if you can't get the bank to put a rush on getting us that video."

Sometimes making a nuisance of themselves doesn't pay off, but every now and then it does actually speed things up. In this particular case, Ryan calling back to the bank actually seems to get them to put a rush on the request for the footage. Unfortunately, that just means the two of them get to settle in and go through hours of recordings trying to recognize anyone from their too-large suspect pool of anyone aware of magic that knew the victim. At least they have the time stamps in the bank's files on the deposits to go by, or it would be an utterly hopeless task. It may still be a hopeless task, as Granger reminds them when they head out to grab the tapes that there are concealing and disguise spells their perp might just be smart enough to use if they're unlucky.

They get a break, though. It's a good thing wizards aren't as accustomed to trying to hide their crimes. Or, perhaps, Esposito figures that criminals of any stripe are frequently a bit dumb. Whatever the case, Danys Abernathy, Second Desk Clerk of Records? Has absolutely no good reason to be in the muggle bank on the day of the first deposit into Summer's account. Or any of the other subsequent ones, where she's also clearly visible on the tapes. Bingo.


	7. Ron Weasley and the Unlikely Coincidence

_._

* * *

 _Chapter Seven: Ron Weasley and the Unlikely Coincidence_

* * *

Ron was pretty skeptical during the first several cases they worked with the muggle police. He respected them, and they were capable and professional at what they did in their own world. It had just seemed obvious to him they would have a tough time working around not having magic. Now, however, they've all worked enough cases he was really starting to understand how far behind wizards were about some things. Harry and Hermione had tried before to explain how a lack of magic had lead muggles to progress a lot more than wizards did. Mostly he'd just humored them, figuring at best the muggles were breaking even, and not really understanding until recently that wizards just never changed if they could help it. Even when the change might be a good thing.

So when somebody starts coming after those trying to help make their world move forward in a good way, Ron hates it. The muggles working with the aurors are trying to make wizards safer by helping to solve more crimes, and they don't deserve to die for it. Not that they would anyway, but to be targeted for helping makes it that much worse. Of course, Ron's not sure it makes things any better when it starts to seem like the killer was just trying to use anti-muggle sentiment to cover up the real reason Summers was killed.

All he can do to fix it is his part of the investigation, so he does. It takes way more research than he'd like, but eventually, he and Hermione along with Beckett and Castle go back to interview Summers' family and talk to more than his girlfriend, which allows them to unearth a close connection to a second cousin once removed who is a wizard. Strangely enough, it's a man Beckett had already talked to briefly, but at the time she'd had no idea he wasn't a muggle. It clearly frustrates the detective she'd missed such an important lead, but Ron doesn't see how she'd have known if she told the bloke she was calling as a homicide detective.

Even in the additional interviews, they might not have found the connection if they hadn't gotten some weird comments from Summers' family that rang as vaguely familiar to Ron. Most of the family just knew they weren't close to that side and claimed it was some forgotten and uncomfortable estrangement they didn't know the details of, while his mother said something about them just always having been a little odd. It reminds Ron of his own family and how no one really talks about his mother's second cousin who went off to become an accountant, which makes him suspicious enough to ask more questions.

Alfred Gerard was an elementary school teacher as Summers' girlfriend had told Beckett - he just worked as an instructor at one of the smaller local wizarding schools. He responded promptly enough to the floo call Harry had made asking him to come in to the office and talk to them. The first thing Ron noticed about the man when he stepped through the fire was his unfortunate resemblance to a mangy giraffe. His second, more useful observation, was that for an official at a wizarding school who should have some experience dealing with authority figures, the man was overly nervous. They'd led him into the room they'd been using for questioning and left him there to observe his demeanor, and he'd tried to play it cool. The way he kept running a hand through his floppy hair and playing with the buttons on the cuffs of his robes when he forgot to try and look bored were fairly telling, however.

Ron opts to stay outside while Hermione goes in, along with Beckett and Castle. Harry stays outside with him, not just to keep from crowding the guy, but also because Gerard had been doing that staring-at-the-scar thing that still drove his friend mad some days. Harry's gotten better at hiding his annoyance, and it certainly happens less over here in the States, but he avoids having to deal with it when possible. With the man already clearly so nervous, it's probably better to take Harry out of the equation.

"Thanks for coming in today, Mr. Gerard," Hermione began. "We need to ask you a few questions about Todd Summers."

"I don't know what about. I mean, of course he's dead. I know that, but I don't know anything about it. Other than that he's dead," the man spluttered out. His fidgeting only became more pronounced, as he looked between all the others in the room and then away again.

"How well did you two know each other?" Hermione asked.

"Well, you know we're related. You said so yourselves when you flooed."

"Look, we just want to find out who killed Todd. So it'd be best if you were honest with us up front."

Gerard shifts heavily in his seat and the swallows hard before looking up to meet Hermione's eyes. "I didn't think it would be that big of a deal, you know? But when he got killed like that, and so soon after, I just ..."

"Why don't you start at the beginning?" Castle suggests, sympathetically.

He takes a deep breath. "Todd and me, back when we were kids we were friends. I mean, my family, well it's pretty embarrassing but we've always run high on squibs."

"I'm sorry, did you say squids?" Castle asked, incredulous.

"Squibs," Hermione cuts in to clarify, "are non-magical kids born to magical families. They're usually pretty rare."

"But not in your family?" Beckett prompts, turning the focus back to Gerard.

"Right. So when the nearest kid in age to me was one of the lines that had gone all-Muggle, well, my parents figured best to make sure I had one foot in either world just in case. Once I got my letter, we lost touch." He shrugs.

Ron thinks briefly of his mum's second cousin, the accountant they never speak of again. It was just what happened, most of the time, once somebody chose one world or the other.

"You got back in touch though, clearly," Castle says, impatient for the man to get to the meaty part of his story. Ron can't entirely blame him, because he's pretty curious where this is all leading, too.

"Yeah, yeah. He put it together. We lost touch when I went off to wizard school, I said, but he figured it out somehow – not sure how, exactly, he never did say. Just gave me that look and told me if I wasn't as clever as he was why should he reveal his secrets? Made a stupid crack about magicians and wizards, every time." Gerard shakes his head in remembrance. "Anyway. He called me one day – we have a phone installed at the school for the muggleborn kid's parent's, right? Anyway, he called and kept putting out little hints. Finally told me he knew a nice little place on Lumos Avenue and did I want to get a drink. Well, I knew he didn't have any magic, so of course I was curious enough to go."

He fidgets again, clearly stalling before he gets to the part of the story they're all waiting to hear - that he doesn't seem particularly eager to tell them. "Well, that was the first time we met up, but it wasn't the last by far. He told me about the work he was doing with the Ministry, and he had a bunch of questions about the magical world. Like, he was asking the aurors he was working with about the job, but didn't want to be distracting them with other things he was just curious about. It was good for a while, nice to reconnect, you know? I should have just left it alone."

He pauses then, and it's at the point where Ron is ready to prompt him to go on, when he clears his throat and takes the initiative himself. "See, I kept thinking about how he was working in the Ministry. How the Department of Records was just down the hall. Like I said, my family, we throw a lot of squibs." He looks up and meets their eyes, one by one, "and I've got a daughter. Cutest little thing ever, my Lisa. Light of my eye and all, I just – I want to know. You've gotta know what the muggle world is like for kids now, right?" He turns his attention to Castle, who is nodding, "you have to get your kid into the right preschool or they won't get into the right gradeschool, high school, then getting into a good college – it's right out."

"It wasn't – it wasn't like those old purebloods who think they're too good and dump their kids! Or worse! I know it's illegal – but I - I love my daughter, and that's why I want to know what she's gonna need, now. Too many kids that turn out to not be magic, they just end up barely making due, stuck somewhere in between both worlds, never having a real chance in either. So I asked him to take a look for me. At the magical rolls, you know, the ones that record magical births, see if she was there."

They exchanged a look between them. The man seemed sincere enough. Ron didn't know much about muggle schools and kids, but from the way Castle had been sympathetically nodding along, he figured there was some truth to what Gerard was saying. Skipping past the question of whether or not he was telling the truth for the moment – they'd have to find some way to rule him in or out more thoroughly later – this still didn't tell them what they needed to know about the murder.

"So he agreed to look for you?" Castle asked him.

"Not at first. Like I said though, we got a lot closer, spending all that time. He met Lisa and I met his kids and he got it, you know? I didn't mean to push, but I figured what was the real harm, right?"

"Well, he did it, he looked, and she's on there," Gerard smiles briefly, genuinely, before his face falls again. "Except I figured that he'd be as pleased as I was, or at least pleased for me. He wasn't. He was, well, he was weird after that. He didn't want to talk anymore about it, was real firm about me keeping it to myself, but when I asked him what he was so spooked about, he said it was nothing."

"What about the money?" Castle asks.

Gerard shakes his head, his face scrunched in puzzlement, "What money?"

"Someone started making deposits into his bank account right after he made that trip into Records for you. You're know nothing about it?" Beckett responds, her tone skeptical.

"No. He never said anything to me." If he wasn't actually surprised by the story of someone putting deposits in Summer's account, he played it very well. Much more convincingly than he'd acted when he'd been pretending ignorance at the start of the interview, Ron thought.

Hermione asks him for a few additional details about when and where he met up with Summers. They don't need to check his alibi for the time of death, they already confirmed he was at his job the morning of the murder, but confirming his story about his meetings with Summers and getting an idea of the timeline will hopefully put these details in perspective. After they've allowed him to leave, Beckett heads straight to her white board to add that Summers had told Gerard about Lisa's status on the rolls one week before the first deposit had been made into his account. A short conference between them makes it clear Ron isn't the only one that felt Gerard was genuine saying he didn't know about the money, but the timing is suspicious enough Beckett insists they can't rule him out as being involved somehow.

As Beckett is writing the last of the details down, Esposito and Ryan, who had been doing their own separate work related to the case, rejoin them. It turns out they haven't been the only ones to have made some new progress. Even better, there was still some hope Ryan and Esposito's lead would actually give them a direct suspect, since they'd found a connection between the money deposited into Summer's account and someone in the Ministry who would be perfectly capable of losing that report of Summers' unauthorized access to the Department of Records.


	8. Harry Potter and the Unavoidable Past

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* * *

 _Chapter Eight: Harry Potter and the Unavoidable Past_

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Their next suspect is a contrast in just about every way to Gerard. Where he had been tall, thin and slightly unkempt, Danys Abernathy is stout, carefully coiffed, and wearing expensive robes. Where Gerard was acting guilty from the moment he walked in and was clearly reticent to say much at all, she is a forceful woman who attempts to bluster her way through being called into the Auror's office for questioning, making loud complaints they're wasting her precious time. She goes so far as questioning their professionalism for having nothing better to do than harass her. Add a lot more pink and a girlish voice and Harry would be tempted to compare her to Umbridge. He grits his teeth at the thought and hopes there's no real resemblance in personality.

Harry half expects her to try and refuse to answer any questions at all, considering the attitude. That's not going to be an option, however. The detectives found footage of her making deposits into their victim's back accounts in a muggle bank she had no reason to be in, she's the Second Desk Clerk of Records, and it gets better - her husband works in the Security Office and was scheduled during the hours between Oddson filing his report and it disappearing. If she refuses, they'll got to veritaserum if they have to; it's just too many factors to be believable as pure coincidence.

Beckett doesn't waste any time getting down to it. She bursts into the temporary interrogation room and reaches the table in front of the victim in a couple long strides, laying down a series of still images from the bank footage in a series before the woman one by one with pointed deliberation and a challenging look in her eyes. There's a flinch, but it's tiny enough Harry almost misses it before the woman begins blustering denials.

Beckett outright mocks Abernathy's suggestion it must be someone using polyjuice or tampering with the silly muggle technology. When the woman's denials continue to splutter on, as she claims to have no idea how her husband's job could be relevant and that she's never even met Summers, Beckett confronts her with their latest bit of knowledge. For two of the deposits, Abernathy was scheduled to be at work at her post in the Ministry and her coworkers were already on record as having covered for her absence. Beckett suggests the woman give them a believable alibi for the morning of Summers' murder if she's really as innocent as she claims, but Abernathy finally falls silent instead.

"Fine. Yes, it was me on the tape, making those deposits. But it was under the direction of the Head of Records, Ross Green."

"And why, exactly, would Mr. Green be paying off Todd Summers?" Beckett asks, skeptical.

"I can tell you that, but not for free." She looks pointedly away from Beckett and towards Harry.

Taking his cue from her interest, Harry interjects, "What do you mean?"

"I just did what I was told. Maybe I should have reported what was going on before now. Merlin knows I thought about it when that man turned up dead like that on the steps. My daughter died and I'm trying to raise her kids without her deadbeat of an ex trying to take them away from me. I need my pension, and I can't go to prison."

"Whether or not you go to prison depends on what you did," Beckett says harshly, "so you'd better start talking."

Her reply is indignant, her tone pure offended dignity at being interrogated about her actions. "I personally didn't do more than making those deposits and what everybody else in the department did, which is turn our heads the other way."

Beckett had previously said that sometimes you got to a point with a case where you could just feel it all coming together, and Harry is getting that feeling right now. If they can just get Abernathy to open up a little more. Beckett gives him an encouraging look, since the woman seems clearly more wiling to talk to him as an auror than the detective, so he prompts further, "What was going on down there that you were deliberately not noticing?"

When she continues to refuse to say anything, giving him a challenging look, he adds, "I can't make any absolute promises until you tell us more than that. If you convince me it was really all your boss' doing, I will plead your case to my boss. That's the best you're getting."

She gives a sharp nod of acknowledgment, and then starts talking. "Records is supposed to be fairly secure, and that's how Green got away with it for so long. He picks all his staff personally, and he does it carefully. It's always people he knows or people who have vulnerabilities he can use as leverage. Summers walked right in at just the wrong time and put two and two together. Green started paying him off, but it was clear the muggle was uncomfortable staying quiet. He kept showing back up and wanting to ask questions, the idiot. I wasn't that surprised he turned up dead."

"Enough with the theatrics, get to it! What is Green hiding?" Beckett snaps, her patience lost.

"Summers snuck down there one night to look at the birth records for reasons of his own. Problem was, he picked exactly the wrong time to be in that area. He noticed one of the new volumes was out and in the process of being altered."

"Wait," Harry stops her, "altered?" He asks, unable to believe what she's saying. That's supposed to be all but impossible and is definitely highly illegal.

Her lip curls up in a sneer. "You lot, you're not from New York's wizard society, you won't know the Greens are one of the oldest pureblood families, and one with some of the strongest ties back to the Old World. One of the ones willing to do anything they can get away with to hang onto the power they have. People would notice if no muggleborns showed up on the magical roles, but nobody's quite sure why they happen or how rare they are. So if the number goes down by a few, who would ever know? Until that muggle stuck his nose in, nobody."

It's sensationalist, Harry will definitely give her that. Still, he has to wonder, "Do you have anything to back up your claims at all? You're making a very serious accusation."

"Isn't that your job, investigating, finding proof? I'll tell you this much, Green made withdrawals from Gringotts the day before he sent me off to that muggle bank to transfer the money, every time. And for a man that harps on punctuality as much as he does, he was late for the first time I can ever remember that morning. Hours late. I'll make it easy on you and volunteer to take veritaserum and repeat every bit - if you help me out, like I said."

Harry signals to Beckett that they're done and they quickly get an alibi from Abernathy for the morning of the murder before leaving her alone in the room. It shouldn't take that long to double check with the witches' salon she claims to have been at, but that's not the reason for ending the interview so abruptly. As soon as they exit the interrogation room and rejoin the rest of the team, Harry tells Ron to go request a set of magically binding contracts and requisition a dose of truth potion. Harry hates to even think it, but this is bigger than the murder, and they'll need a lot more detail on when and how the records have supposedly been altered before they even look in Ross Green's direction. Frustratingly, that's going to require far more specialized knowledge than Harry's team has – it'll probably be handled by the head of the NYAO and someone from the Enigma Department.

Harry ushers the team to their usual room after setting one of the junior aurors to guard the door Abernathy sits behind with her potentially explosive knowledge, and Ron rejoins them several minutes later. The whole group of them exchange long looks, Hermione's face particularly looking grim and Beckett's frustrated. The detectives all together are mostly confused, and it's Castle that finally breaks the silence. "I'm not sure I really understood the significance of all that? Why are the birth records for muggleborn wizards so important?"

Ron exchanges a look with his friends and fellow aurors. "Well," Hermione says, "the way they decide to send out invitations to the magical schools is based on birth records. So if they've been secretly erasing names from the records for years, there are a lot of muggleborns who never got invited to be part of our world. It's going to be a huge scandal."

"Big enough to kill for." Esposito states, matter-of-fact, clearly taking in all their reactions and coming to the right conclusion.

Harry nods in agreement. "Definitely. There have been a few more efforts made here to try and modernize our world, but wizards and witches as a whole tend to be very insular and stuck on traditionalism -"

"And that means old families, old blood, and looking down on anyone they feel better than," Ron interjects.

"Doesn't this pretty much make a mockery of everything the Auror Department has been trying to do, though, if other parts of the Ministry have been secretly excluding children of non-magical people all along?" Ryan asks.

"Yeah, but it could be worse?"

"How?"

The three of them exchange a long look. "Let's worry about getting our case against Ross Green together first."

The first step is to get Abernathy to sign several magically binding witness agreements and repeat her claims under veritaserum. It's more of a formality than anything, though the detectives are curious and a little creeped out by the process of administering the potion. Although the Goblins aren't willing to disclose financial details, a closer look at Green's schedule shows him taking extra time for lunch on all the days Abernathy indicated. It's enough to take what they know to the Head of the NYAO, and Harry sends off a patronus to request a meeting with the man. Unsurprisingly, he gets a response back fairly quickly; such messages are rare and everyone wants the Summers' case solved sooner rather than later. The group of them as a whole present what they know about the murder and Abernathy's claims about Ross Green. The potentially tampered records will have to be investigated by someone from Enigma with far more expertise in magical contracts and records before they can begin to know how much has been altered. Since the last thing they want to do is tip Green off by trying to tie him more solidly to the murder, it's time to hand the case off, even though they haven't conclusively solved it. It's unsatisfying to Harry, but they don't have much choice.

Once they have a better idea of the situation down in the Department of Records, it should be fairly easy to add Summers' murder to Green's list of offenses, but it will have to wait. What isn't going to be easy is for the Ministry to deal with the fallout from what the murder was meant to hide. Harry almost expects they might try to cover the whole thing up, although that might be his previous experiences with Cornelius Fudge talking, but he realizes as much as the politicians in charge might want do that, they can't afford to. Something is going to have to be done to prevent similar workarounds on all the Ministry's sensitive files in the future, and someone is going to have to go back and check all the other files besides birth records haven't been tampered with. It's going to be a mess, and one that will be impossible to keep quiet.

He's a little disappointed in himself for being surprised at the scandal they've uncovered at the heart of the motive for their victim's death. Harry knows he shouldn't be. It's not like most of their shared cases with the homicide detectives don't revolve around wizards conflicting with the muggle world, usually because of hate. Still, random wizards on the street is one thing, but to find this kind of thing still actively going on in the Ministry?

Sure, it's not as bad as Voldemort being able to get his own puppet in office and start having muggleborns stripped of their wands and sent off to Azkaban. Still, avoiding a government that had allowed just these kinds of abuses and so easily become corrupted that much further was part of the reason Harry and his friends had relocated to New York. Back home Kingsley Shaklebolt is doing his best in Fudge's old office, and if there's anybody that can wrestle things back into ship shape after Voldemort's second rise, the former auror and Order of the Phoenix member is a likely candidate. Of course, they had other reasons for leaving, and the three of them have come to settle in here. The history and spectacle of the war were worth leaving behind, and whatever ugliness is going on behind the scenes, the Auror Office was trying to make actual changes out front. This is his place now, and if that's going to be so, there's some things that should probably be put out in the open with the detectives who are trying to help make things better.

He can tell that the detectives don't quite get it, why anyone would choose to exclude muggleborn children. Oh, they get the idea of prejudice well enough. It'd be stupid to assume otherwise, but they don't know how easily a whole section of their world can take a giant step backwards at the guidance of one megalomaniac and his followers. The three of them had wanted to leave that all behind, but it's clearly not as simple as that. Ultimately Harry decides that if they're going to keep sharing cases like this, maybe it's time to be a little more open.

Plenty of the sordid details get left out, but in the end, he tells them about both times Voldemort rose in a reign of terror over everyone who didn't fit his hypocritical standards of purity. About how so many not only went along with it out of fear, but also from a sense that his underlying beliefs were true on some level. And how, even after all they went through to break the evil wizard's power, the world at large had seen no reason to change the framework that had created Voldemort in the first place.

"Wow." Ryan says it with wide eyes, and from their faces, Harry thinks he's speaking for all of them.

A few minutes pass, and then Castle can't seem to help himself, "That would make an amazing book. No, no, it'd have to be a whole series. Maybe there'd be movies, too."

"Castle!" Beckett yells before Harry can even start to figure out how to respond.

"Kidding, kidding. Statutes, secrecy, I know, I know. It totally would, though," his eyes are twinkling, but then the writer turns serious. "It might even help stop it from happening again, if everybody knew the story, you know."

Harry blinks and looks to his two best friends. It's an interesting thought. He's not sure if he likes it because he has had more than his share of fame and attention, but if it might make a difference? Maybe it's not quite so crazy an idea after all.

END.

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A/N: This is definitively the final installment of this series. I hope everybody that read this far got some enjoyment out of it! I appreciate the reads and I'd especially like to thank those taking the time to follow, favorite, or review and let me know there was some interest out there.


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